While the golf world is still digesting the unforgiving fate of Dustin Johnson at the PGA Championship, Corey Pavin will soon have a tougher pill to swallow.
All the furor over whether Pavin names Tiger Woods as a captain’s pick for the United States Ryder Cup team distracts from the fact that Martin Kaymer‘s victory at Whistling Straits is the latest of a series of omens this year that indicate that the Europeans are poised for a rout and their fourth Ryder Cup title in the last five events.
Traditionally, simply winning a PGA event on American soil is all that’s needed for a European player to get himself onto the team. Kaymer, in Wisconsin on Sunday, and Graeme McDowell, who ran away with the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach in June, both accomplished that feat.
Ian Poulter (WGC-Accenture Match Play), Lee Westwood (St. Jude Classic), and Rory McIlroy (Quail Hollow) are all also comfortably penciled in.
But not Justin Rose, who has won twice in North America this year, at The Memorial and the AT&T National. He can’t make the European team automatically unless he earns a victory at The Barlcays in two weeks.
European stalwarts Paul Casey, Padraig Harrington and Luke Donald also are battling with Rose. Casey currently has a precarious ownership of the final spot, but one of those four is set to lose out when Colin Montgomerie makes his captain’s choices on August 29.
Combine this with an unforgiving atmosphere expected at Celtic Manor in Wales, and memories that are sure to be stirred up by the last U.S. visit to European soil four years ago, when the Euros blew them out at the K Club in Ireland, 18? – 9?.
Yet, after Sunday’s finish, Pavin’s biggest concern wasn’t that four of his automatic spots have been taken by Dustin Johnson, Bubba Watson, Jeff Overton and Matt Kuchar, who’ve never played in a Ryder Cup.
Instead, it was figuring out if he wants Woods, who proved only that his game didn’t completely unravel at Firestone.
All signs point to Europe comfortably winning on home soil for the fourth time in a row.
